Shownotes
We discuss the challenges and opportunities facing Central Ohio as the region experiences rapid—yet manageable—growth.
Our special guest, Adam Porr, the Research and Data Officer for the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), joins us to demystify how strategic planning helps drive sustainable development in everything from transportation and housing to air quality and infrastructure.
We’ll explore how MORPC’s collaborative efforts shape the future of our region, what goes on behind the scenes in massive projects like the 70/71 Split, and why data-driven decision making is at the heart of it all. From understanding complex issues like zoning and affordable housing to innovative programs like LinkUS and Zone In, Adam shares his unique journey from engineer to urban planner and discusses how community input plays a vital role in building a thriving Central Ohio.
Whether you're navigating traffic congestion, concerned about housing options, or interested in creating a more sustainable community, this conversation will give you a deeper look at the planning process keeping Central Ohio moving forward. Plus, find out how you can get involved and make your voice heard. Let's get started!
If you like this episode, please let us know. We appreciate the feed back, and your support of offset costs of producing the podcast!
Here are 3 key takeaways for anyone passionate about urban development, community growth, or the future of Central Ohio:
Collaboration Drives Regional Success: MORPC is not a legislative body, but rather a catalyst, bringing together local governments to plan, fund, and coordinate critical transportation and infrastructure projects for sustainable growth.
Data-Informed Decisions Shape Our Future: The MORPC team leverages detailed data analysis to guide major projects, from air quality monitoring to long-term transportation and housing plans. These insights help communities adapt proactively to trends like population surges and economic shifts.
Community Voices Matter: Through programs like Leaders Listen, MORPC actively seeks input from residents and stakeholders. This feedback influences everything from transit corridors to affordable housing strategies—so your voice truly helps shape the future of Central Ohio.
Moments
00:00 Urban Life's Eye-Opening Impact
07:02 Complexity of Urban Planning
10:48 Metropolitan Transportation Plans Overview
16:32 "Managing Modest Growth Rates"
22:03 "Leaders Listen: Annual Public Survey"
31:24 "Link Us: Bus Rapid Transit Plan"
36:50 Central Ohio's Transit-Centric Development Plan
40:22 Complex Zoning Hinders Urban Growth
43:18 Advocating for Missing Middle Housing
52:02 Building Codes Impact on Housing Crisis
57:11 Central Ohio Population Change Factors
58:51 Columbus: Attract Migrants to Grow
01:07:08 Novice-Friendly Bike Routes Initiative
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Recorded in Studio C at 511 Studios. A production of Circle 270 Media® Podcast Consultants.
Copyright 2026 Carol Ventresca and Brett Johnson
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Adam is the Research & Data Officer at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) where he helps to promote prosperity and sustainability through data-driven insights about the region and its people. After spending a decade as an electrical engineer (B.S. 2006 and M.S. 2013, both from OSU) in the defense industry, Adam discovered a passion for sustainability and pivoted to a career in city and regional planning (MCRP, Ohio State University, 2019). Adam and his family reside in Clintonville (Columbus). He is a tireless advocate of appropriate technology and transportation cycling, and enjoys backpacking, gardening, and fermenting all sorts of things.
Mentioned in this episode:
Listener Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the experts interviewed on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcast hosts or any affiliated organizations. The information provided in these interviews is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with qualified professionals for specific advice or information related to their individual circumstances. The podcast host and producers do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information provided by the experts interviewed. Listener discretion is advised.
Transcripts
We are looking forward our way. Hi, this is Brett. Central Ohio is often cited as one of the fastest growing areas of the country. We can attest to the constant traffic congestion and the lack of housing. Noted examples of population growth. However, our region is actually in a sustainable growth pattern through the hard work of the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission or Morpsi and other agencies. Today's topic is going to focus on the planning process needed to ensure our regional growth continues in a very smooth and very sensible direct. Our guest expert is Adam Porr.
Brett Johnson [:He's the research and data officer for Morpsi. Thanks for joining us.
Adam Porr [:Well, thank you, Brett, and thank you, Carol. It's great to be here.
Carol Ventresca [:Well, and we've had a lot of folks from Morpsi on the show. This is your first time with us, so thank you for your time and your expertise bringing it to our podcast. We appreciate that and this is going to be a fun opportunity. Although the big joke is that I'm the only one around here who likes data and numbers. So I'm glad you're here with me because you like data and numbers, so.
Adam Porr [:That I do, yes.
Carol Ventresca [:So we're gonna have a good time. Before we do jump into the work of morpcy, however, we always like to let our listeners know about our guest. So why don't you tell us about your very interesting career path, which flows from Ohio State to across the Atlantic, of course.
Adam Porr [:Well, it's a bit of a rambling story, but I'll try and keep it short. I think it is relevant. So I. I didn't start out as an urban planner, which is what I'm trained as now. I started out as an electrical and computer engineer. I got my bachelor's degree from osu. During that time, I also worked as an intern at Battelle and did design engineering with them and eventually was hired on full time with them. And then one day, not long after I was hired on, I came home from work and my wife came up to me and she said, how would you like to move to London? And it took me a minute to figure out she meant London, England.
Carol Ventresca [:Yeah, London, Ohio.
Adam Porr [:Yeah. Or London, Ontario. We had not talked about living overseas previously, so it kind of caught me off guard. But it turns out she had applied for a job and had been offered a job in London, and it was an opportunity we couldn't refuse. And so I left my job at Patel. We sold our house, we packed all of our stuff into four suitcases and went to London. And she worked as a teacher. I worked in IT for visual effects firm.
Adam Porr [:So a little bit of a deviation there even from my electrical engineering background, but it was my first experience living in a big city. It was my first experience not owning a car, it was my first experience being a renter in a non student environment. And so it really opened my eyes to a way of living that I just hadn't experienced before growing up in the suburbs of central Ohio. And so we spent about a year there, I did some traveling and working there. And then we came back to central Ohio about the time the Great Recession happened and I once again resumed my career at Battelle as an engineer. And it was great. I really liked the work, I really loved the people I was working with. But eventually I felt called to do something that was a little bit more connected to the local community.
Adam Porr [:And so it was about that time that I discovered urban planning. I didn't know that existed as a career and did some self study in urban planning and eventually decided that that was what I wanted to do. So went back to school, got my master's in urban planning and had the great fortune to meet Professor Harvey Miller, who's a geography professor at osu. He also runs the center for Urban and Regional Analysis. So concurrently with my degree I worked with Dr. Miller and got to learn all sorts of things about working with data and spatial data in an urban setting. That's what turned me on to the work that I'm doing now. That work also was super interesting.
Adam Porr [:Harvey is my friend and mentor. But eventually I decided that I wanted to do something that was a little bit more concrete and so I started looking for opportunities and found this one at morpc. So I'm currently employed there as the Research and Data officer and it's kind of the perfect synthesis of all the things I've done in the past. I actually lean pretty heavily on my.
Carol Ventresca [:Engineering work, I would think so. My background is urban sociology, which is certainly not at all the technical building a building kind of thing. But I would think that that engineering background has really added to what you can provide in your field.
Adam Porr [:I think so. And there's plenty of engineers at morpc, but many of them are civil engineers or transportation engineers. I think I'm the only electrical engineer there. A little different perspective.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, so we've had MORPC guests on in the past and we spotlighted. So it's a very important link in promoting the growth of our region. By supporting collaborative planning, MOREPC assists local communities to create the infrastructure needed for sustainable growth. Yet many residents of our area have Never heard of MORPC or the great work it accomplishes, which again, I guess to its credit, it's in the background. Doing the best job it can though too. But it's also nice to know give credit where credit's due. Can you explain the work of MORPC and the issues included when we are focusing on regional growth?
Adam Porr [:Sure thing, yeah, that's a great question. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that folks don't know morpc because I didn't either until I entered the planning sphere. But MORPC is obviously very well known amongst planners. So we have kind of two main functions. One is that we are the metropolitan planning organization for Central Ohio and what that means is we are the entity designated to coordinate transportation planning for the region. And so we coordinate the efforts of local government to come up with plans and then seek funding for those plans, federal funding. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is we are a council of governments which means that unlike in some regions where the MORPC of the region is a legislative body or regulatory body, MORPSI is not like that.
Adam Porr [:If you want to be part of the council of governments, it's an opt in situation and our members pay dues in proportion to their population. And so we don't get to tell anyone what to do. We exist solely to provide opportunities to convene local governments and try and help everybody work together and work to make Central Ohio the best it can be.
Carol Ventresca [:I think folks don't realize the amount that goes into a plan. So you know, we've all been commiserating about the 70, 71 split and my gosh, what it's like 10 years now and probably another 10 years to go. But that is so incredibly complicated. And the alternative is for the to come in and say, well, we're just gonna close 71 and you're out of luck and you're not gonna be able to drive through Columbus on 71 until we're done. Well, you can't do that. Not only does Columbus need 71 to be open, but everybody else in the country who's, I mean, what is it? Columbus is within what, like three quarters of the population or something? I mean everybody comes through here. So it's, it has such a really important role. Planning has such an important role in what happens in our community and people think plans just pop out of thin air and they don't, they don't.
Carol Ventresca [:So wonderful. Are there any other things that you want to mention about what MORPC does?
Adam Porr [:Sure, absolutely. Our work is actually quite broad. So Transportation planning is, is the historical reason for the existence of MORPC and the core of what we do. But we also work in sustainability. So we have an air quality monitoring program where we alert people if there are hazardous air quality conditions in the region. And we also have deployed a network of what I would call citizen science purple air air quality sensors. So there are volunteers around Franklin county who have hosted these things for us and they're constantly collecting data on air quality and it's providing a much more geographically distributed sense of what the air quality in the region is. So that's pretty cool.
Adam Porr [:We do work with renewable energy, with alternative fuels, electric vehicle charging, housing. We have a great home weatherization program that is a service we provide to. I forget what the exact requirements are, but to low income residents of the area to basically make their homes more resistant to weather and more energy efficient. And all of this is done at no cost to them. And so it's a way to, to help out those folks and also to improve our energy efficiency as a region.
Carol Ventresca [:Right. I mean, it's not only a health issue, but it's that the individual saves money on utility costs and in so doing then makes us a more sustainable city.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, absolutely.
Carol Ventresca [:Wonderful. You know, when you were talking about the air quality way way back when we first started the podcast, we had the Breathing association come in. You don't even realize how many people are impacted by air quality levels. It's, you know, folks who have asthma, older adults, people who have copd, you know, it's important information. It's more than just a little note on your local weather channel, you know, that kind of thing. So, you know, we've had the opportunity to work with Morpsi on a lot of different projects. I was part of a project when I was the director at Employment for Seniors many years ago. The experience and the knowledge that MORPC brings to a program is incredible.
Carol Ventresca [:But it also looks at funding resources, which is important in all of these projects that we've got going on. Can you give our audience a glimpse of some of the major programs that Morpsi has supported? Like we talked about 7071? Sure.
Adam Porr [:Of course, I failed to mention earlier that associated with our transportation planning function, we create two major transportation plans. One is the Metropolitan Transportation Plan, which is very forward looking. It looks out 20 to 25 years and basically comes up with a vision for the transportation needs for the region using estimates of population, demographics, workforce, stuff like that, and forecasts of those things as inputs. And that's kind of where my team comes in. And then we also do the Transportation Improvement Program, which is a plan that is revised every two years and looks forward four years. That takes a subset of those vision elements from the MTP and says we're going to focus on these in the next four years. In order for a transportation investment in the region to be funded with federal dollars, it has to be on that list. And so as you can imagine, there's lots of communities in central Ohio.
Adam Porr [:Everyone has their own set of priorities. And so it's part of morpc's job to bring all those folks together to get everyone on the same page about like what would work best for the region and make sure everyone is being treated fairly in that process.
Carol Ventresca [:The number of projects that likely need to be done in our metropolitan area are how many times more than the money that's available? And so I'm always complaining about Delaware County. I live in Delaware county, north of Columbus, north of Polaris Parkway. It's one of the fastest growing counties in the state. And yet we are all living off of two lane old county roads. And I keep saying how could they plan all of these houses? And now I can't get out of my complex because all the roads are under construction. Is that what's going on? There's just not enough money?
Adam Porr [:Well, yeah, part of it is about choosing priorities. I think part of it is also that there's different parties involved with planning, different things. So morpc, we focus on planning for transportation, but if you consider housing, we, we don't do housing planning, we don't do land use planning. These are handled by local governments. And so, and you know, ODOT does their own transportation planning. Ohio Department of Transportation, there's county governments involved. So I think everyone's trying to work together and that's again part of our role. But sometimes things get out of sync and sometimes it's hard to predict like the amount of growth that's happening in, in Delaware, and especially in Delaware is the fastest growing county in central Ohio.
Adam Porr [:But Union county is also growing very fast. And I think that growth has ramped up more recently and more quickly. And so that might have caught planners off guard.
Brett Johnson [:Speaking of the growth. So, you know, there's extensive information has been gathered and distributed on the population growth of the region. The 15 county region is expected to grow by more than 726,000 people, reaching 3.15 million people. Franklin county is going to account for half of that growth. Could you talk about what's going on in our neighborhoods to account for this tremendous Growth.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, sure thing. You're absolutely right. Franklin county is. Well, we expect Franklin county to absorb about half the growth and to absorb the most, the highest number of people. Franklin county is actually the 8th fastest growing in the region. So Franklin county is not growing that fast in terms of the growth rate. The outlying counties are growing a little bit faster in proportional terms, but Franklin County's absorbing the most people.
Carol Ventresca [:Yeah, it's a difference in percentage versus actual number.
Adam Porr [:Exactly. And that's just because there's so many people already in Franklin County. But I think that's an important distinction because the rate of growth might come as a shock to planners in those outlying communities and to local leaders. And so they may have a harder time adapting to those conditions than leaders in Franklin County. I'm just speculating. I'm sure they're doing a great job.
Carol Ventresca [:Because a smaller county like a Madison county, if they suddenly had an influx of 10,000 people, that would be huge. Yes, it's a lot smaller than the 300,000 that Columbus is going to bring in, but it's a significant number. I have seen that with Sunbury, because Sunbury is just north of me. And the growth from my. I mean, it's less than 10 miles up Route 3 from my house to Sunbury. When I moved there 20 years ago, there were almost no houses. And now it's just one complex after another. It's amazing how many people farther out they go, the longer your commute is to work.
Carol Ventresca [:Lots of issues. Lots of issues involved.
Adam Porr [:A lot of interrelated issues. So there are lots of claims about how quickly the region is growing, and we are growing quickly. If you look at that 726,000 increase, which was. That's between 2020 and 2050. So we're actually a little bit further along that path now. But if you break that down into an average annual rate of growth, it's about 0.89% for MORPC's 15 county region of interest. So that's good. That's a strong rate of growth.
Adam Porr [:But it's manageable. I like to say it's manageable, especially when you compare it to places like Austin. So at that rate of growth, Franklin or the region, the population will double about every 75 years, if I'm remembering correctly, versus Austin, their rate of growth was roughly 2.8%. So their population at that rate would be doubling every 25 years. I think there are a lot of folks that like to see lots of growth. That rate of growth, in my opinion, would be hard to manage. And so I think we're really fortunate to have a nice slow, it's not even slow, but a nice, modest and steady rate of growth that allows us to reap those benefits, but also gives us time and breathing space to adapt.
Carol Ventresca [:To some of the challenges, which also thanks to morpc, we know that we have that information. They're doing the comparisons with other regions around the country, seeing the mistakes that are made. So bringing back good practices to central Ohio, hopefully. Yeah, right. Well, we're assuming.
Adam Porr [:So everyone's trying really hard, I think.
Carol Ventresca [:Exactly, exactly. So as I mentioned, I love numbers. Data makes me happy, which is just. I don't know why, but it does. I want to ensure though that we cover more than just numbers for this program as this rapid growth rate in Central Ohio has greatly impacted the communities. How is this critical data utilized by morpc? It's not that we're just going to spout numbers, but we actually use that information for local governments, for organizations. How does it all tie in with the factors such as housing, transportation and employment?
Adam Porr [:That's a great question. It's used in lots of ways internally at morpc we obviously use it for our planning processes. So to come up with the MTP plan and the TIP plan that I mentioned earlier, those are both very data hungry. The way it works without getting too much into the weeds is we try and understand what the current conditions are in terms of population, demographics, housing, workforce, all those things. And then we try to extrapolate or forecast what they will be in the future. So we do that at the county level and then we try and break it down into much smaller areas. The name for them is traffic analysis zones, but that's not really important. They're like neighborhood sized zones basically.
Adam Porr [:And what that allows us to do is understand where people are likely to be traveling from and where they're likely to be traveling to on a daily basis. And then we also consider how they might travel, so by car, by bus, whatever, and so between. That's called the travel demand model. That's the model that we use to figure out how people are likely to move around. And all of that feeds into those plans. So that helps morpc, acting in concert with local communities to decide, okay, we need a new bus route here or we need to widen this other road here. And also it helps communities. There's a nexus between land use and transportation.
Adam Porr [:Right. So it might help, for example, decide where to locate the intel plant.
Carol Ventresca [:Right.
Adam Porr [:Presumably somebody looked at that.
Carol Ventresca [:Exactly. And I think that's where when folks don't know what MORPC does. And yet MORPC has this valuable and vast pot of information. And so if a small community like London, Ohio has an opportunity for an economic development contract with an employer working with morbsi, they can figure out, okay, well, here's a good place to put that plant or that data farm or whatever it may be, or office complex that's going to be built. But here's another place. You know, there's some options out there. And then if London doesn't get it, maybe somebody else's. Sunbury is looking at the same company.
Carol Ventresca [:So it's helpful to the local communities, but it's also helpful to the employer who's coming in. So they get the best place.
Adam Porr [:Absolutely, yeah. And it's not just transportation either. Communities we don't get directly involved in things like wastewater, for example, although we do help coordinate those efforts. Now, that's kind of a recent change, but communities use that data to plan. You know, is our wastewater treatment plant going to be over capacity? If so, where should the new one go? Things like that?
Carol Ventresca [:Yeah, like Delaware County, Delco's building more of the towers around to hold water in different places in the community.
Brett Johnson [:We talk about data, but regardless of that data, there's so much that can be gained by talking to people. Of course, those living in the region, working community, they all have opinions and ideas. Morpse has a Leaders Listen program which gathers survey data from residents and disseminates the results. Can you give us some more details on the process or any other opportunities for feedback? Plus, how is that data collected, analyzed and then circulated?
Adam Porr [:Yeah, thank you so much for asking about this. This is a relatively new thing that we started doing in 2023. Leaders Listen is a survey series, so we tend to release them annually, although we did have two of them in 2024, I think, and it's released via a web form, Web survey basically, and it's open to anyone who wants to participate. We would like to see at least 2,000 responses that are distributed kind of in a representative fashion amongst the counties in the MORPC area to make sure we're accounting for everyone's perspectives. And so, so we do this basically once a year and there are a set of core questions that we try and keep consistent from year to year. And the idea there is we'd like to see how people's attitudes are changing over time to see if. See if we're improving, hopefully. But also we ask each.
Adam Porr [:Each survey has a special focus area. So the first one in 2023 was about transportation. In 2024, I think we issued two surveys, one on housing and one on sustainability. Last year we had one on economic development. And now we're preparing for our next one, which will again be about sustainability. So we're going to revisit some of those topics that will be ready to receive responses on September 30th. We'll release that in conjunction with our Summit on Sustainability, which is one of our annual events. And then we'll collect responses for for a few months and then analyze the results so that we can prepare a report to be shared at our summit on our State of the Region event, which is in March.
Carol Ventresca [:How do people end up getting those surveys? Are they on a list or.
Adam Porr [:Through a lot of different channels? So MORPC has a standard set of channels, including all the usual things. Press releases, social media. We have a monthly newsletter that I would highly encourage everyone to subscribe to. Sorry, it's bi weekly actually, called the E Source. That kind of fills you in on the biggest things. At morpc, we also presented at commission, so that our audience commission is our member governments, so we can reach out to our member governments that way. And we also have lots of other working groups and things like that. But also through forums such as this, we would like to see lots of participation, not just in Leaders Listen, but in all of the feedback opportunities that we have for our projects.
Brett Johnson [:Is that survey available online then on the website?
Adam Porr [:Yes.
Brett Johnson [:Okay.
Adam Porr [:Yep. You can find it via Morpsi's website. The URL is morpsi.org leaderslisten and there's no active one right now, but all the older reports are there.
Brett Johnson [:Gotcha.
Carol Ventresca [:Okay. Is there. You said people could get on the newsletter. Do they get then a notice that the survey's available so they'll know to go in?
Adam Porr [:Yep.
Carol Ventresca [:Okay.
Adam Porr [:Yep.
Carol Ventresca [:So what are the challenges about finding people to do this? I mean, you don't want somebody to just fill out a survey just because they want to take up time in their day. You know, you want people to have thought through the issues and kind of have a feel for what they want in their community. Is there an educational part of this?
Adam Porr [:Yes, that's actually a really tricky challenge when it comes to planning. And it's something I didn't fully appreciate until I started in this work. But there's actually many challenges reaching out to people. There's the kind of the logistical barriers that you might expect. Like if you have a meeting, for example, and you're trying to get feedback through a meeting format, when do you hold it to make sure that most people can come if you do it in the evening. What about second shift workers? What about people with children? What about people who just don't have discretionary time in their day to do those sorts of things? There's also sort of technical challenges like what you alluded to. Some of these issues are very complex. They don't distill well into a ten word question.
Adam Porr [:Many of them require a contextual background. And that goes both ways too. The person asking the question or seeking the feedback needs to have the context about the audience that they're trying to get the information to work with, to get the information from. And then the person who's providing the information may need to have the context to answer the question. So it's really tricky. I don't know that as a discipline, the planning discipline, I don't think we've solved it yet, but we are making improvements. For example, now we can use technology in different ways to reduce some of those barriers. One way that MORPC collects data is using interactive web maps.
Adam Porr [:And so this allows people to go to a website and scroll through a map like a Google map essentially. But you can place points of interest on the map and then add comments to them. And this is great for us because it eliminates administrative barriers. It allows us to collect and process more data because we get data in digital form and it's pre located and all sorts of things like that. But it adds a technical barrier for folks who aren't comfortable using that format or who don't have a Internet enabled device. And so I think the best we can do is just try to offer a variety of opportunities and try and meet people where they are as best we can.
Carol Ventresca [:Right. Well and I think too that individuals, particularly if they are in the midst of an issue in their community or their neighborhood, also need to take the steps of talking to somebody. At Morpsi. In the work I've done, I know the Morpsi folks are begging for information. They want to talk to you, they want to get more information. Surveying is not easy in any. All of our disciplines we have wrestled with. Does this question make sense? I can't tell you how many times I've written a survey question and the data that comes back is like, that wasn't my question, where did that come from? So it isn't easy.
Carol Ventresca [:But it is also our responsibility as a citizen to try to make our opinions known. Is there a way to easily contact morpc? I want to be on the survey, but I have no Internet access can they call and leave you that message?
Adam Porr [:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I don't know that number offhand.
Carol Ventresca [:Audience. We will have a list of resources that includes the phone number. Not Adam's, but the Morpsi number.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, I mean, definitely. The best way I would say is to reach out to those general numbers, like the general number or to infoorpsy.org because then regardless of the question that's asked, it can be routed to the appropriate person.
Carol Ventresca [:Exactly.
Adam Porr [:So some of them do come to me when appropriate and I may route them further to other people on our team. Speaking of which, I should mention that about the complexity of generating survey questions and things like that. I really would like to give a shout out to my colleagues Dave Dixon and especially to Ethan Hug, who among many other people at MORPC are really instrumental in putting that survey, the Leaders Listen survey together and I think do a great job coming up with those questions.
Carol Ventresca [:Well, we really have to give a shout out to everybody at morpc. I mean, it's a phenomenal team. They do great, great work. It is inspiring to work with them on projects. So thank you to all the morcpsy folks.
Adam Porr [:I'm also inspired. Let me jump on that bandwagon. Every day. I'm inspired. There you go.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Well, recently two important projects were given the green light and quite frankly, I was surprised. It was. I think it's now Columbus is finally waking up and realizing, okay, we got to get some stuff done. Link Us program was approved via the Levy to expand code of Transportation and the city of Columbus began the Zone in program updating the zoning for building codes again. I'm amazed. I am. I don't know why I was so pessimistic about this, but at the same time like, all right, it got through.
Brett Johnson [:We actually are now living in the 21st century. That sort of feel to it, right? Yeah. So what is the impact of the programs like these? Is it possible to influence not only housing trends but transportation and employment with this large scale collaboration?
Adam Porr [:I think so, yeah. And I agree. I was not optimistic either. I was so relieved when the levy went through. And just to recap, there was a modest increase in the sales tax. That was the levy that went through in the November election. And that is what's really going to make Link Us possible. Link Us and Zone In.
Adam Porr [:I don't think the importance of those things can be overstated. So let me explain what they are. Link Us is a plan for Transit Oriented Development, which is jargon. So let me dig in. It's centered around the idea of bus rapid transit, which I like to refer to as trains on rubber or trains on wheels because it has many of the same benefits as a subway, but at a fraction of the cost. And the way it works is. So this will be administered by coda, like all the other transit in the region. And the way it works is along certain corridors, there will be special bus routes that have dedicated right of way, a dedicated lane, essentially, so they won't have to compete with other vehicular traffic.
Adam Porr [:The fares will be prepaid before people board, so more people will be able to board faster and the bus won't have to dwell as long at the stop there. There'll be boarding will be more convenient, there'll be level boarding and boarding, so the platform being at the same level as the bus and boarding via multiple doors. And all of this will use zero emission vehicles, which is a nice touch. The stations will be improved. So really, it's just a way to really elevate our transit system without going to the lengths that would be required for subway, which in my opinion is just not realistic for Columbus at this time.
Carol Ventresca [:We're way past putting subways under the city. And being a kid who grew up in Columbus at a point in time in which 70 and 71 didn't even exist. I mean, I can remember 71 coming through the northern part of Columbus. We have been so dependent on car transportation that it's really been difficult to get the city to pivot to see alternative transportation opportunities. And code has done a great job actually, having younger generations come through who don't want to have cars. Good for them, because they have really pushed this through. And I have never lived for a long period of time in a city with mass transportation, but I've been in school and internships in larger cities, Detroit and Washington. Loved, loved the D.C.
Carol Ventresca [:metro system. I mean, the subways were phenomenal. And so we can't do subways, but we can do this mass transit on this, on the buses.
Adam Porr [:Yeah. And you know, that was one of the things I loved so much about London. You know, it was the first time I had lived without a car. But I didn't feel like I lost anything. In fact, I felt like I gained freedom. I didn't have to worry about parking, I didn't have to worry about getting in accidents. I didn't have to scrape the windows, although that wasn't really a problem in London anyway. But I think until you experience it, at least for me, until I experienced it, I couldn't have conceived of that, you know, Growing up in suburban central Ohio, it was just not on my radar.
Adam Porr [:And so I think this is a visionary thing to do. I'm so glad the voters could see it. I'm so glad that CODA is doing it and the MORPC gets to be part of it too. There's actually more to it than just the bus. Rapid transit, and this all works together. There's also what we call transit supportive infrastructure, which is basically providing the means to get people to the rapid transit stations and other bus stations by improving the sidewalks, improving multi use paths, improving bike lanes on the streets, things like that. So that's really important because if people can't get to the bus, it doesn't matter how great it is. The other part of transit oriented development is, and this is where zone in comes in, I'll describe that in more detail in a minute.
Adam Porr [:But the idea of concentrating development along those corridors where you have good transit, they work in tandem because people who choose to live in those places know that they won't have to rely as much on their car and can choose transit more easily. And that's not, that's a benefit, not just for them, it's a benefit for everybody. Because repeated studies have shown that taking even a small number of vehicles, vehicles off the road, for example, by people taking transit instead dramatically reduces congestion. So all the other drivers benefit as well if even a small number of people change mode to bike or bus or whatever.
Carol Ventresca [:And the notion of transportation is to get people to work. So if you're building up the infrastructure on those mass transit lines, it's not just to get to have housing there, but it's having. You'll have other opportunities for employment there too.
Adam Porr [:Absolutely. Yeah, I should have mentioned that too. That's a great insight. Yeah, housing, jobs, services, all sorts of things.
Carol Ventresca [:Yeah, that's a good point too. Services, doctors offices or the little mini clinics and those kinds of things that could be easier for people to get to.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, and I think aside from the transit oriented corridors, that's going to be important everywhere in central Ohio. You know, I think in general we're going to need to build houses close to jobs and services, jobs and services close to existing houses, all of that, close to transit and other mass transportation facilities. Because roads, roads don't scale. You know, roads fill up with cars, Cars can only get so much smaller. And even with like the platooning and things that supposedly will, will come with autonomous vehicles, there's still a space constraint on the road. And again with the repeated studies, other studies have shown that Adding additional lanes to roads at best improves congestion for a short time. Sometimes it doesn't improve congestion at all because people recognize that the congestion has been reduced and immediately fill the void. Right.
Carol Ventresca [:Well, and as I complained to one of your colleagues at morpc, every time they build a road, it ends up merging to something else. And so it's like it doesn't matter that there's another half a road there because you still have to merge onto the one that's packed and nobody in this town knows how to merge.
Adam Porr [:Are you sure you weren't an engineer.
Carol Ventresca [:In a. I know, I'm telling you, as I said, I complained to one of your colleagues and I just looked at her and I go, which moron figured out that the road from gemini onto Saturn 71 ends like 10, 10ft? Once you get. It's like there's no merge place, there's nowhere to go. It's awful. It is awful. So anyway, those are those. This is why I love the Morpcy folks coming. So I could let, I don't fill out the surveys, I just tell you guys directly.
Adam Porr [:That's, that's your privilege.
Carol Ventresca [:Yeah, exactly. Well, so, so we talked about, about, linked us. How about Zone In?
Adam Porr [:Yes, thank you for bringing me back to that. So, yeah, so Zone in, and I should qualify this by saying Zone in is an initiative of the city of Columbus. I don't work for the city of Columbus, so I can't speak for the city. I am a resident of Columbus and I do own a home in a location that probably will eventually be affected by Zone In. So it is something of great interest to me. But in a nutshell, what it is is that the city has a zoning code for non planners and other folks who may not know what a zoning code is. It basically is a means by which the city can dictate what can and can't be done with a property. And these emerged in the early 20th century in response to some properties were creating nuisances that were impacting other properties.
Adam Porr [:And so rather than litigate everything through lawsuits, they said, well, let's just try and separate incompatible uses and prevent these things from happening. So that's how zoning codes came about. The Columbus zoning code hasn't been significantly rewritten in 70 years. So historically zoning codes have been very focused on like separation of uses. So residences would go in one place and commercial entities would go in another place. An industry.
Carol Ventresca [:All the warehouses are together someplace. Right?
Adam Porr [:Yeah. Which is helpful in some ways and not helpful in other ways. But what we've learned is that over time the city and other cities throughout the country, this is not unique to Columbus, but these zoning codes have been revised and revised and revised and have become very complex. And what this does is it makes it very difficult to inexpensive to build new housing, to build new businesses, new industry, all sorts of things. It also has the tendency to some of these zoning codes are very restrictive, especially in certain neighborhoods, especially single family neighborhoods zoned for single family homes exclusively. And so what this does is it kind of locks those neighborhoods in a certain state and exempts them from any change, which is perhaps great for the people that live there. People might really appreciate their community not changing, but it has the maybe undesirable effect of forcing all of that change somewhere else. And because many of those neighborhoods were inaccessible, especially to low income folks, to people of color, there's, there's some equity aspects to this as well.
Adam Porr [:So the part of what zone in hopes to do is to make it to create conditions that would make it easier to build more homes, more businesses in a way while still protecting adjacent property owners. So they're not doing away with that. They're trying to balance those needs. So enable the creation of homes and jobs basically and also to improve equity by kind of better distributing the growth in different places.
Carol Ventresca [:There are places that I'm always interested in the history of it. If you drive up Northwest Boulevard, you will see a lot of homes that are, I call them quads. I don't know what exactly, but it's like a large building and it's two units on the bottom, two units on the top, which is a really great way to have starter homes or apartments without being in mega apartments. I mean there are those kinds of of areas and it's not that one developer came in. I don't think those were all the same developers because they look different. But it's those kinds of things that could really bring a lot of opportunity for better housing in a lot of places. And so I'm guessing that zone in will allow for those kinds of options.
Adam Porr [:Hopefully, yeah. And I love this topic. This is one of my favorite topics. I own a duplex in Clintonville, so I am a big advocate for what's known as missing middle housing, which includes. So missing middle refers to it's kind of the middle between single family homes and large many unit apartment buildings and includes duplexes, triplexes, quads, townhouses, things like that in many neighborhoods. Or I'll just say in some neighborhoods at least a duplex or a quad can be indistinguishable from the single family home next door. So for people interested in kind of preserving the character of their neighborhood, that might be a good option for allowing more people to live there without really changing the character. And these sorts of buildings were very common, especially Pre World War II.
Adam Porr [:They're very conducive to transit oriented development because they're smaller footprint and people can walk to transit more easily. But what ultimately happened is the zoning codes created neighborhoods that were exclusively single family homes. And so place. If you own a property in such a neighborhood, it's illegal for you to say, convert your single family home to a duplex or to add what might be known as a granny flat or a mother in law suite.
Carol Ventresca [:Yeah, I'm banking on one of those. One of the cousins has to come up with a mother in law suite for me.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, that's a great solution.
Carol Ventresca [:Or a little mini house. Yeah, I'll take one of those. Well, you know, when my parents were growing up in that Milo Grogan area, which would be fifth and Cleveland Avenue, you'd have a regular single family home, and then you'd have a duplex next, a double next to it. But what that did, it gave the owner the opportunity to rent the other side. So it helped their home ownership. But it also had a family in a house as opposed to a small apartment, and they were more in a neighborhood as opposed to an apartment complex. So those kinds of options aren't out there anymore. And that's what I'm hoping that zone in will do.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, yeah. And to get back to your question, zone in is a. They're taking a phased approach to it. So the first phase is focused on specific corridors. What might be called like main streets, such as Main Street, East Main Street. Well, Main street generally throughout Columbus, Broad Street, Olentangy River Road, not coincidentally, all of those streets are also link us corridors because these things work in tandem. Right. So that was no accident.
Carol Ventresca [:No. Thank goodness.
Adam Porr [:Yeah. And so to the extent that there are opportunities to build duplexes and quads and things like that along those corridors, zone in should make that possible. I think they're really focused on a little bit larger scale buildings along the corridors. I forget what the limits are, but along many of those corridors, they raise the permissible height of the building just a little bit. What's allowed. It's really not very extreme, and in a lot of places it's already not built up to the level that it's allowed to be. But I think one of the advantages of increasing A little bit more is developers could maybe get a better return on their investment by building a few more units. So maybe that makes it possible.
Carol Ventresca [:I don't think people realize how flat Columbus really is. I mean, we don't have a lot of really huge skyscrapers downtown. But even when you're looking around town, you could go for a long period, long, long distance before you're seeing anything above four or five floors.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, and I think zone in was pretty sensitive to not allowing drastic changes or. Well, it's certainly not encouraging drastic changes. And so that was one thing I appreciated about it. Another thing to keep in mind is that allowing these new developments is only part of the equation. Actually seeing that change, realizing that change is also dependent on someone choosing to do that development.
Carol Ventresca [:The developers.
Adam Porr [:Is that what you're saying? Yeah, exactly. Or, I mean, I suppose an individual can also be a developer. I think often we think of big developers, big companies, when we think about developers today. But, yeah, individuals and small developers historically were a very important contributor to new housing construction, especially. And the increasing complexity of the zoning code and regulatory hurdles and things like that have made it a little bit more difficult for those folks who may not have as deep pockets as the big developers. And so I'm hopeful that kind of reducing that complexity, providing more certainty in the permitting process will encourage more small developers.
Carol Ventresca [:Well, I'm going to pivot this just a little bit. We've talked about issues on transportation issues, on building and housing, but we have a lot of organizations in central Ohio who help and support housing opportunities for people. I mean, we are desperate for housing. The Affordable Housing alliance of Central Ohio is one such organization. And we've actually had them here with us and talking about housing. They recently reported a survey finding the community's support for affordable housing is actually really high. What you see in the newspaper is it sounds like it's always negative, but the report said overwhelming stated that. People who stated overwhelming were 78% of the respondents.
Carol Ventresca [:They supported missing middle housing. 80% supported converting commercial buildings to housing. Only 3% were negative. And they basically didn't want affordable housing in their backyard. Our communities are strongly support. Our communities strongly support increasing affordable housing. There are challenges to doing this. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Adam Porr [:Sure, yeah. I'll do my best. There are many people in the area that are much better qualified than I am to talk about this, including Carly Boos, who is the executive director of.
Carol Ventresca [:Shout out to Carly. She's wonderful.
Adam Porr [:Has she been on this program?
Carol Ventresca [:Yes.
Adam Porr [:Okay, great.
Carol Ventresca [:She and Mike Wilkos, they did a phenomenal job of talking to us about housing issues. Yes.
Adam Porr [:Okay, great.
Carol Ventresca [:And an audience. We will make a note of that podcast on our resources sheet so you can go back and listen to it because it was really very powerful.
Adam Porr [:I'll be downloading that as soon as I leave, but I'll do my best in their stead. So there's lots of different factors. We already talked about zoning to a certain extent, and I think one of the big problems there is the amount of uncertainty that it inserts in the home building process. It extends timelines, but the extension of the timeline is not always predictable. And as we know, time is money, so that's costing developers money, I guess. I won't harp on zoning too much more. Glad to see things are improving in that regard. Building codes may also pose a challenge.
Adam Porr [:Building codes are well intentioned. Obviously they're meant to protect people from safety hazards and things like that. But there's some trade offs involved. Many of them have evolved from a time when we didn't have the same technologies that we do now. So, for example, some building codes require two sets of stairwells in apartment buildings, which makes sense, right? If you didn't have a sprinkler system that gives people two means of egress instead of just one. But now we have more sophisticated sprinkler systems and alarm systems and things like that. That's not to say we should get rid of the second stairwell, but we have to at least acknowledge the trade off, right? That space that's being occupied by stairwell could be occupied by units, right? So it makes the construction cost per unit more expensive. There's another thing I like.
Adam Porr [:I don't like to think about it, but I would encourage people to think about related to building codes, which is homelessness and living in substandard housing that already exists and so maybe may not be compliant with all the building codes. That also poses safety hazards. So if by making housing expensive to build through onerous zoning codes, we force people into homelessness, or we force them into older substandard buildings, that's a safety problem too. And so again, not saying building codes are bad, I think there's just trade offs that we need to be thoughtful about. So maybe there's some room for improvement there too. With all the recent inflation and just cost increases, generally it's become more expensive to build. So labor is more expensive, materials are more expensive. Developers need to make a profit, right? Most developers, there are some nonprofit developers, but even they are faced with constraints.
Adam Porr [:And so the Development has to pencil out, as they say. And if it doesn't, if a developer can't afford to build a quad because it just doesn't pencil out for some reason, then they won't. They'll build a single family home or they'll build a five over one, four stories of residential over retail, something like that. Those things are great too, but it reduces our options.
Carol Ventresca [:I would think too that developers have to have a pot of money to start with, and so the investors might push what they are more comfortable with, the kinds of housing they're more comfortable with. They are used to single family homes. That's what they're going to invest in. So developers have to go to a well somewhere with dollars. They can't start with nothing.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, yeah. Have you read the Strong Towns book, Escaping the Housing Trap?
Carol Ventresca [:No.
Adam Porr [:No. Okay. I don't often hear the argument that you just made, but I think that's a really important argument. The financing, the way we finance these things is really important. And one of the things I learned from that book and from Strong Towns is that big developers especially, they have certain funding streams that like certainty. Right. So they like development patterns that have been done, tried, you know, tried time and time again and have proven to be successful. We, we all want that with our investments.
Adam Porr [:Right. We want a good chance of, of return. So it's a rational thing to do. But it again, limits our options. Right. If we, if we want a greater diversity of housing, we need to think about maybe empowering small developers who can access different funding streams. Maybe we need to think about creating different funding streams. Maybe local governments have options to do revolving loans, for example, for small developers or whatever class of developers they want to support to make projects possible that may not be possible with traditional funding.
Carol Ventresca [:Well, it's not to say that investors are being greedy. Bottom line is a developer can build something, but if somebody doesn't buy it, it's not going to do anybody any good. Exactly. So it's understandable where they are going to fund projects that they know are true sellers.
Adam Porr [:Absolutely, yes. I mean, I'm not a developer. I don't mean to speak for developers, but that makes a lot of sense to me and I've. I've heard that elsewhere too.
Brett Johnson [:Our discussion. It looks as though things are in the. We're moving in the right direction, let's put it that way. But we've got to create new housing and transportation routes. I mean, if we don't continue in this direction, what are the ramifications?
Adam Porr [:It's hard to say, if only I had a crystal ball, I'd be living a different life than I am. But so, yeah, it's hard to say what will happen. I think there's a few things that I'll be looking at and maybe I can just start with those things.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. And that's all we can. That's why we bring in expert guests.
Adam Porr [:Yeah. Well, let me start with population, because I meant to mention this earlier in response to one of your questions. Population changes primarily in three ways. Births, deaths, and migration. Right. The combination of births and deaths. So births minus deaths is known as natural increase because often it is increasing. I've heard it recently referred to as natural change to account for the possibility that population could decrease, at least in a certain place.
Adam Porr [:But anyway, that's one way of population changing, and migration is the other way. And in recent years in central Ohio, our population growth has been roughly half due to natural increase and half due to migration. Of the part that was due to migration, about half of that was due to international immigration, and much of the rest of it was from people moving to central Ohio from elsewhere in the state. We don't really get that many migrants from other states, or at least we haven't historically. So this is a challenge for us because the rate of natural increase has been decreasing. So we're natural increase is contributing fewer people to our growth.
Carol Ventresca [:Not to be morbid, but is part of that because there aren't a huge. It isn't a huge increase in births, but there is an increase in deaths because of aging.
Adam Porr [:Exactly. Yeah. So the boomer generation is the largest generation our society has seen. And as those folks age, they start to pass away and the median age of the population kind of increases with them, at least for a time. This may reverse in a few decades. Also, having the median age being a little bit higher means that the per capita birth rate is less. And also younger people are choosing to wait longer to have kids or having fewer kids. So all of that is affecting the natural increase and not just here in central Ohio.
Adam Porr [:Those trends are throughout most of the country. What this means for us is if we want to continue growing at the rate that, let's say MORPC projected, we need to continue to attract migrants and probably need to do so at a faster rate to account for the decreasing amount of people being born here and staying here. So some of that is under our control to a degree or under our influence at least. So I think to get back to your original question about housing, Brett, one of the draws for Columbus has Historically been affordable housing and affordable cost of living generally and good economic opportunity and nice place to raise a family, stuff like that. But if we continue, if cost of living here continues to increase, we lose that draw, at least relative to other places. You know, maybe Indianapolis manages to remain more affordable than we do. Well, Columbus and Indianapolis are kind of similar, so maybe people would choose to go there instead. So.
Adam Porr [:So I think that's a really important thing. I think you never know what's going to happen. Historically we haven't brought in people from other states very much, but maybe we'll see an influx due to climate migrants, people who are deciding it's no longer worth it to live in hazard prone regions like hurricane prone regions or fire prone regions. Maybe they'll move here, we don't know.
Carol Ventresca [:Well, I can remember even when I started at Ohio State back in the 1980s, we were all complaining about the brain drain. Folks would come here to school, but they wouldn't stay. And that was a huge issue that the universities in Ohio were really trying to keep work with local government to get economic development opportunities going so that there would be a job opportunity for a graduate to keep them here. So I don't know that that's changed in terms of the brain drain. I don't think it's lessened.
Adam Porr [:I can't say for certain because I haven't looked at migration patterns broken down by age. I do know that we still tend to export people to other states. I think some of the larger recipients of people from central Ohio are Sunbelt states. So maybe a lot of those people are retirees. But I was someone who moved away for a while. I lived in London. I also lived in Portland for a while. My family's all here, so that was a big draw to bring me back.
Adam Porr [:I think Columbus has made and central Ohio broadly has made good strides in providing opportunities for recent graduates to stay here. But we certainly could do more.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, we haven't even addressed remote work.
Adam Porr [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:You can live in Columbus, but the business you're working for could be in.
Carol Ventresca [:Colorado ultimately or an east coast or another very expensive.
Brett Johnson [:So the attraction to live here is the, it's economical live here. But I don't want to live in Portland because the business I work for is in Portland.
Adam Porr [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:You know, sort of thing. And they recognize that and it's like, okay, we'll work with you remotely, you know, And I don't, I don't think that percentage, it can't be that tremendously high, but it can only increase. I think it's I don't think it's going to decrease.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, I would think so. I think we are seeing a little bit of the pendulum swing after Covid. Because everyone was remote during COVID That could be.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, yeah.
Adam Porr [:And it's swinging back a little bit. But probably we'll never get back to. I hope we never get back to everyone in the office five days a week. I mean, just from a vehicles on the road standpoint, that would be unfortunate.
Carol Ventresca [:I do remember liking transportation during COVID but, you know, you could get anywhere anytime and a lot less than it takes now to get downtown, that's for sure. So we always say this time goes fast when we're on our podcast and want to thank you for joining us today. But we also always give our guests an opportunity for last words of wisdom.
Adam Porr [:All right. Well, I don't know how wise they'll be, but I'd be happy to be.
Carol Ventresca [:I'm sure.
Adam Porr [:I'm sure there are lots of things we didn't get to talk about today, by the way, so I would love to come back if you.
Carol Ventresca [:Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Adam Porr [:But one of the things I definitely wanted to make people aware of is we recently created a new data product called the morpc Insights platform. It's a website and it's a little bit different from what we've done in the past in that the focus is not on the data itself as much, it's more on the insights that that can be extracted from the data. And so if you were to pull up that website, it's morpsi.org insights and there's basically, you choose your geography level, so region, counties or communities. And then you choose your specific place of interest. And then you see what kind of looks like a newspaper page. There's a grid of stories, if you will, and each story has a data visualization, a map or a chart. And then just below that there's a headline that tries to bring out the most important aspect of that chart. And then below that there's a little bit more explanation.
Adam Porr [:And then if you really want to dig into it, there's links to interactive data tools and the raw data, if you really want to dig in deep. And eventually we're also going to connect them to fact sheets as well, which will take that commentary and extend it even further and link to other morpc.
Carol Ventresca [:That sounds like a whole podcast right there.
Brett Johnson [:Sounds like your afternoon. I know you'll go digging into the numbers.
Carol Ventresca [:I'm excited. Yes, I'm really excited to keep Delaware county on task here so wonderful. Well, and let me also just intersect two words of wisdom to again, encourage folks that if they have opinions about things like transportation and housing changes and LinkedIn or linked us and zone in. Got that really confused. You know that morpc, those are ears that are willing to listen and to really go in there and talk to people and fill out those surveys.
Adam Porr [:Yeah. Do we have time. Could I talk about just two opportunities that exist right now?
Carol Ventresca [:Absolutely.
Adam Porr [:All right, great. So. Well, first of all, as I noted, in September, we'll have the opportunity for the leaders listen again. But right now, and Carol, you might be interested in this. There is an opportunity to provide feedback about pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure on the US 23 corridor in Delaware County. So there's two ways you can do that.
Brett Johnson [:God help me say, I can't even envision.
Adam Porr [:Wow. Well, that's. So as you can imagine, I'm sure desperate for feedback on what's possible.
Carol Ventresca [:That's talk about motor speedway.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, yeah. But if there's any opportunity to let people do short trips by foot or by bike instead of getting on the road, again, that helps everybody. So there's two ways to provide feedback for that. There's one of those interactive web maps that I was talking about. So if you know of a place that would benefit from a bike trail or a place to lock your bike or whatever, there's a giant crack in the sidewalk, something like that, you can do that. And there's also a survey there that you can respond to. I'm forgetting the name of that project offhand, but I can provide a link that you can share.
Carol Ventresca [:We will make sure it gets a little special section in the resources.
Adam Porr [:Okay, great. And that opportunity will be open through the end of the year, but the sooner the better. There's another opportunity that's really unique, and this one's a bit more time limited. We're currently working on updating our bike map for the first time in 10 years. And in doing that, we want to make it a tool for people who aren't experienced cyclists who want to get out there, but may maybe aren't feeling super comfortable with that. And so we're trying to identify several curated rides that will. That will be very comfortable for novice cyclists, but that will take them to interesting destinations and kind of expose them to the bike network. And in order to make sure those routes are comfortable, we're doing this cool thing where MORPC staff, members of the public, really anyone who wants to, can ride the route with an experienced buddy if you desire.
Adam Porr [:And if you do this you'll ride on a special bike that's been outfitted with a standard bike, but it's been outfitted with cameras. And the camera will be recording the environment the whole time. And afterwards it will be analyzed. And the analysis will look for hazards, look for things that might make cyclists uncomfortable, and all of that will be used to improve those routes, to denote things correctly on the map so that we're not telling people it's a comfortable route if it's not, things like that.
Carol Ventresca [:Interesting.
Brett Johnson [:Interesting. That's good.
Carol Ventresca [:Yeah. I'm still amazed at the 23. And one of the things, because 23 has been an issue. There were a lot of people who lived that northern corridor of 23 and worked at the university. So we used to hear about these issues because it's awful. But the changes that were made to 33 down towards Lancaster, where you had off ramps to this, instead of these folks who were trying to cross 33, some of those things seemed like, why didn't they do that in Delaware county, too? You know that. So I don't know. Well, I'll go on the maps and put my opinion.
Brett Johnson [:There you go.
Carol Ventresca [:There you go.
Adam Porr [:That's actually a great example because there is some bike infrastructure along the 33 corridor. And so, you know, there's. There's trails across 33. There's some infrastructure adjacent to 33. So it's not right on 33.
Carol Ventresca [:But I do have to really commend whoever had the idea to use old train tracks to be walking and biking corridors. I mean, talk about a great use of what had been discarded land.
Adam Porr [:Yeah, the surface is good. They're straight. They're flat.
Carol Ventresca [:Exactly.
Brett Johnson [:Well, you know, many thanks to our expert guest, Adam Poor, research and data Officer for the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission, for joining us today. Listeners, thank you for joining us as well. You're going to find contact information and resources we discussed in the podcast Show Notes and on our website@looking forwardourway.com and we are looking forward to hearing your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes.
